Kiosk.Net V8 Product Info
The
Kiosk.Net system is a revolutionary all-in-one item distribution, advertising, and
group messaging system. It is an enterprise ready, scalable, powerful and reliable
system to inform, distribute, and advertise your products. The heart of the
system is a powerful networked and web-integrated kiosk network that can be used
to give out any kind of object - magazines, club schedules, group info,
freebies, anything at all. In addition you have mutiple ways of displaying
textures on your kiosks to advertise your products and services.
The system is highly configurable and offers a ton of features in one integrated
package to help you design quality kiosks to reach a wide audience, such as the
integrated subscriber system that allows people to subscribe to your subscriber
list, with all the usual IM and object sending features you'd expect and then
some.
Web Integration
The future of serious enterprise products in SL is web integration, and Kiosk.Net
is now fully web integrated. Data about each Kiosk network is stored internally
on a robust, reliable SQL Server database, allowing you to get valuable data and
reports about all of their kiosks across the grid. You can easily manage your kiosk
networks right from your own personal kiosk network administrator dashboard. The
system does not depend on severly limited and slow in-world "databases" but on a
real database system that is always up-to-date, accurate, and available from any
web browser, any time.
Kiosk.Net owners also have data available to them on which of their kiosks is
getting the most clicks per month, week, or day, available on the website, in simple
bar chart format. This will help you see which of your locations are the most valuable
in terms of reaching your customers.
All administration is done via your own private web page called your Dashboard,
which you can access at any time by clicking the Dashboard menu item on your server.
Click the thumbnails below to see screenshots from the website:
Kiosks
The system comes supplied with a whopping 25 fully-configured, full permission,
professionally designed kiosks that you can use immediately, or take apart and use
as the basis to build your own custom kiosk. No need to be a wiz builder to use
this system and have awesome looking kiosks! If you do want to build your own, it's
very easy to simply copy the configuration of one of the sample kiosks into your
own prims and have a working kiosk in no time.
The kiosks operate in multiple, dynamically updateable modes which can be changed
via settings at the server, at any time. All kiosks will automatically change modes
to adapt to your needs. These new improvements give you more power on how you distribute
mutiple items, giving your customers more choices right from your kiosks.
Kiosk modes include:
- Simple mode, which is the easiest to configure and use. In this mode the kiosks
give out all the items you have put into the server contents and automatically flip
through the textures you put into the server, which can be set to any number of
seconds.
- Simplearrow mode, which adds navigation arrows so that customers can flip through
your textures by clicking the nav arrows. This is accomplished with no additional
prims.
- Cycle mode, where specific items are given out depending on what texture the user
clicks. The textures cycle on a configurable time with no limitations.
- Cyclearrow mode, which cycles textures on a time and adds navigation arrows so customers
can flip through the textures manually. Specific items are given out depending on
which texture is clicked.
- Auto mode, which rezzes and arranges prim buttons in a grid arrangement automatically
with user-defined textures on each button that give out different objects, as defined
by you.
- Virtual mode, which allows you to lay out as many "virtual" clickable buttons on
your texture as you like that give out different objects, but all on a single prim.
A special tool is provided to help you very easily define virtual buttons for your
kiosk.
If you decide that a different kiosk mode suits your needs better after you have
already deployed kiosks, no problem. Just change the mode you want to use at your
server, configure everything as appropriate, and your existing kiosks in the field
will automatically change to the new mode. It's like having 6 kiosk types in
one, and never needing to replace them in the field if you'd like to try a different
mode!
On your kiosks, you can configure a special banner prim with two optional buttons
to help promote your business: 1) teleport to a specific location such as your headquarters,
and 2) display a web page. These options will be critical for generating direct
teleport traffic to a location of your choice and web page views to help your business.
If your location moves, or your website URL changes, no problem. They can be modified
and changed at any time, from your server, and all of your kiosks will update with
the new location and/or website.
Group subscriber messaging/delivery service
The system also includes a group subscription messaging service. Customers can simply
click the "subscribe now" button on your kiosks to join your own subscriber group
associated with your kiosk network. They can optionally receive items immediately
on subscribing, such as an intro notecard and a welcome gift. Using the special
"IM Machine" tool provided, you can IM your subscriber group messages and send them
any kind of items any time you want. There are no limitations on the number of IMs
or objects you can send. Customers can add or remove themselves from the subscriber
group and see a history of messages and objects, and can even click one to be redelivered
at any time, from any kiosk. No need to pay for an external group subscriber service
- it's included for free!
You can also IM or send objects specifically to anyone that is an owner of one of
your kiosks so that you can communicate with them, distribute items to them, and
manage as a special group as well.
System Capabilities
The system is scalable and can handle up to 1000 kiosks (due to a hard SL limitation)
with just one server. Grow with confidence that your system can definitely handle
the load. Servers are copyable so you can rez as many as you need and set up as
many networks as you need.
You can assign multiple Administrators for your entire system if you want an employee
to help maintain your kiosk network. They can operate your server and even access
your Dashboard and specific kiosk networks so that they can get access to all the
data to run the entire network if necessary. No longer is your entire system tied
to a single avatar, which makes transferring ownership of the entire network to
someone else very easy.
The system is also the fastest in SL. You will notice with other kiosk systems there
is a very noticeable delay between when a kiosk is clicked and the items are delivered.
Not so with Kiosk.Net. The items are delivered immediately, typically in under one
second! The Kiosk.Net system does not use "llEmail" to communicate, which has always
been a very problematic communication protocol and is not going to be fixed or improved
by LL any longer. Instead Kiosk.Net uses the latest HTTP communication protocols
that are fully supported by LL, so you can be confident that all the existing bugs
with the old, slow, and unreliable llEmail style communication will never plague
you.
System Reliability and Backup
Your Kiosk.Net network of kiosks, unlike other kiosk systems sold today, is impossible
to destroy. If you accidentally pick up or delete a server, all you need to do is
rez a backup copy and with one click your network is back in operation. Making backup
copies of your server is easy - just click "take a copy" from the standard object
pie menu. If you don't have a backup copy, no problem. Rez a new server, configure
it just like your old server, and you're back in business. Be very wary of kiosk
systems that can be destroyed by removing in-world servers by accident. Even systems
that use "back up" servers in-world are vulnerable. Kiosk.Net does not need complicated
configurations of backup servers or routers to keep your system safe.
Since all data is stored on a web server, you can NEVER lose any data by a full
script reset of a kiosk or server, ever. Be careful of systems that store their
data in unreliable, slow in-world LSL scripts. They are always vulnerable to a simple
reset, and your data is gone, unless you take time to make cumbersome email or manual
copy and paste backups of your kiosk list.
Kiosk script upgrades, should that ever become necessary due to bugs or added features
in future versions that you may want to take advantage of, are simple for your customers.
All they need to do is drop a special supplied upgrader object near their kiosks,
and they will upgrade automatically. That's it. It doesn't get any simpler. No need
to replace kiosks.
Customer Service is a keystone of my business success, as any of my customers will
be glad to attest when they have needed help. You are not alone, I will be there
for you if you get stuck or don't understand how to make something work. I am
constantly improving the extensive online documentation to help you get the most
out of your product and give you all the info you need to have a trouble-free, enterprise-ready
kiosk network that will help your be successful with your business.
Sample Networks
With all of these many features, there are many many options avaialble to configuring
your server and kiosks. To make it very easy to get a good idea of what a complete,
working configuration looks like, I have supplied 5 complete working sample networks
for you to rez and examine. There's simply nothing better to help learn a new
system than a working example, and I've supplied one example for every type
of kiosk mode available so you always have a working version to start with. This
greatly simplifies the getting started process and also gives you a great visual
example of what exactly all these crazy kiosk modes are and what they do!
Kiosk.Net Tools
Included in the kit are some auxilary tools to help you monitor and maintain your
kiosk network.
Each network is monitored by a special tool called the Watchdog that will keep an
eye on your connectivity to the kiosk network and alert you via email (I have my
alerts sent to my cell phone, for instance) if something is interrupting your network
so that you can proactively handle problems and not be caught unaware.
I have also included a very handy kiosk distribution tool called the MDOG (Menu-Driven
Object Giver) to make it very easy to distribute your kiosks (or multiple types
of kiosks) through multiple distribution paths - your in world vendors, XstreetSL,
meta-LIFE.net (and other shopping networks), group notices, etc. etc. Everything
can be simplified to ONE object, the MDOG kiosk requester, to give out via all these paths,
which makes updating your kiosk a snap - no need to go update all those vendor boxes,
you just update your one MDOG server with your new kiosk(s) and they are instantly
available to everyone getting your kiosks no matter what the source is.
Kiosk.Net V8 has been chosen by Linden Labs as the official kiosk network of the
SL6B birthday event as well as Burning Life 2009.
In summary, Kiosk.Net Version 8 is the most powerful, reliable, scalable, enterprise-ready
advertising, subscriber messaging, and item distribution system available in Second
Life. If you are determined to make your business grow, don't get caught stuck
with an inferior product unable to meet your changing needs or grow along with your
business. Go with the best, Kiosk.Net!
For more information on how Kiosk.Net works, you can view the documentation
here.